


Gone

by ari_o (imaginarycircus), imaginarycircus



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-04
Updated: 2011-04-04
Packaged: 2017-10-17 14:32:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/177859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imaginarycircus/pseuds/ari_o, https://archiveofourown.org/users/imaginarycircus/pseuds/imaginarycircus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve deals, or doesn't, with his parent's deaths.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gone

Steve had grown five inches in the last six months and his father had nicknamed him "The Stomach" because he was able to eat a large pizza and still have room for ice cream. Even so, Steve was all gawky arms, knobby fingers, and ribs jutting from under tanned skin.

He was hunched over the kitchen table because he had a history essay due in the morning and he was trying very hard to get interested in the Tea Pot Dome Scandal, but the Harding administration wasn't exactly scintillating reading. He fidgeted and scratched and his stomach growled long and low like a wounded bear. It was late and they should have had dinner already, but his mother wasn't home yet. She'd probably had a flat, or something, and would run in the door any minute looking harried.

There was a knock at the door. Steve was glad to leave his books and beat Mary to answer it. There was an officer, not one Steve recognized, and he knew immediately--from the way the man was standing, from the mixture of sympathy and dread on his face, the way his hands were gripping each other.

"Mary, go get Dad." He watched her walk slowly down the hall, but she was lingering, listening and he wanted her to go so she wouldn’t hear.

"I'm very sorry--" the officer began, but Steve walked away from him, leaving the door wide open. He sat back down at the kitchen table and stared at his books. He had to finish his paper, but his mind was a blank.

"Steve? Who's at... oh, Hello, Tom. Come in." His father had found the door open and Steve wished he'd had the courage to stay and listen to the officer. He heard the words, but they made no sense. There'd been a car accident. The police department was very sorry. Nothing anyone could do.

He heard Mary start to cry, but he just sat and looked at his yellow pencil. It didn't seem to mean anything anymore. What was a pencil if your mother was dead? It was nothing. A pencil was useless. He wrote the word "accident" on his notebook and then erased it, but it had still happened. It just didn't feel real.

They did not eat dinner that night and Steve could not sleep because his thoughts were sharp and heavy and he was starving. He crept downstairs and scavenged in the refrigerator for some cold chicken. His mother had cooked it the day before and he almost choked on it. He shouldn't be standing in the dark eating the last thing his mother ever cooked, but he was too hungry to stop. He ate the chicken, and some leftover Chinese takeout and half a box of crackers. He drank several glasses of water, but there was still an incessant hunger gnawing at his innards like a sharp toothed rodent.

His mother had dropped him off at school that morning and he couldn't remember the last words she'd said to him. They might have been, "Have a good day." Or they might have been, "See you later." He hadn't been paying attention. He wished he'd been paying attention.

He went back to bed, but did not sleep. He felt too blank, too nothing to do anything. In the morning his father started calling family and friends and Steve volunteered to make some of the calls. He wanted to help, to spare his father having to say the words over and over--the words Steve could not bear to even think silently to himself.

His father looked faded and shrunken, hunched over the phone, pinching the bridge of his nose. He agreed to let Steve call his grandmother and went out back.

Steve dialed the number and said, "Hello, grandma. It's Steve."

"Stevie? How are you?" She sounded happy to hear from him and he felt terrible about that.

"I'm OK. There was an accident. Mom is..."

"Your mother was in an accident?" She sounded unsure, worried, but not devastated.

"Yes." That was all he could manage.

"Is she all right? Is she in the hospital?" His grandmother sounded increasingly frantic.

"No, she's..." He could not say the word, any of the words that would describe where and what she was.

"Oh, Stevie. I'm coming right over." She hung up and Steve cradled the phone and listened to the harsh beeping that indicated the phone was off the hook.

He hung up the phone and walked through the kitchen to find his father. He should know his mother-in-law was her way over. Steve stopped and picked up a half finished grocery list his mother had made in her tidy Palmer method script. She would never write anything else now and that was such a strange thought. She'd never shop for groceries. She'd never cook. She'd never teach another class of fourth graders. She'd never hug him and tell him he was getting much too tall.

A single tear track down his cheek and he felt so ashamed that he could only manage one lousy tear. He could feel misery and pain, but they were distant feelings set adrift on a sea of numbness.

Mary came down and poured herself a bowl of cereal, but just poked at it with a spoon. Her eyes were swollen and heavy looking. She looked up at Steve and said, "What do you think happens to people when they die?"

Steve shrugged and shook his head. He had no idea.

"I don't understand. How can she be gone?" Mary started to cry and Steve knew he should go and put his arm around her. She was only a little kid. But he folded his arms across his chest and stayed where he was.

People and food poured into the house. Steve shook hands with people, let people hug him, ate the food they'd brought and all the while he felt nothing, but it was the kind of nothing that was a lie, like the eye of a hurricane.

After the funeral, Steve changed into a swimsuit and grabbed his board and swam out and just sat and waited. Nothing happened. There was no sign from the universe that everything was going to be OK. The waves were gentle and he had to swim most of the way back in.

The house was empty. His father and Mary had probably taken their grandmother home. Steve wandered through the empty rooms and the house did not feel haunted. It felt empty in some new and permanent way, like a black hole, which can never be filled because it devours everything that gets near it.

***

Twenty years later it is strange to be living in the house again. It’s doubly empty now and Steve is less thrown by the misery and absurdity of death this time. Maybe because he has a mission, something he must do and that makes a path for him so that he does not get swallowed up by the nothing.

The house is full of things that belonged to his parents. Each object still exactly where his mother left them, untouched by his father. Steve is almost afraid to disturb the dust that lies thickly on every surface.

His new partner swaggers into the house, unaware of what the house means, what the house holds, and he touches things, moves things, and disturbs the dust and Steve holds his breath for a moment because he doesn’t want to forget how things were in this house, but then he realizes the memories aren’t in things, but they aren’t in him either. He’s been gone too long—spent too much time away and now he’s left with nothing but the mission.

It doesn't help that his father sent him and Mary away to try and protect them because Steve is left with a hole he can't fill or close up. He is like the walking metaphysical wounded. The one thing that helps is the sharp incessant banter Danny provokes from him. It's a welcome distraction and it flows so easily, the back and forth between them. Oddly it requires no energy from Steve to keep it up and instead fuels him, gives him a spark he hasn't felt in a very long time. And he'd do anything to keep Danny around, to keep that spark from fading and going out.


End file.
